Written by the art dealer and friend who was among the first to recognise Rousseau's importance, these Recollections present a movingly personal portrait of the artist known as Le Douanier (the Customs Officer).

Henri Rousseau was the first naive artist in the history of Western art to be recognized for his true worth. His paintings have now entered popular consciousness to such an extent that it is difficult to imagine how strongly they were resisted at the time. Much of the credit for his transformation is due to the author of these Recollections, dealer and art historian Wilhelm Uhde. It was Uhde who mounted the first exhibition of Rousseau's work, and the catalog he wrote for the occasion is the basis of the Recollections. In it, he painted a picture of a man of naivete, humor, and total commitment to an art of whose importance he was utterly convinced.

A reassessment of self-taught artist William Edmondson, exploring the enduring relevance of his work This richly illustrated volume reintroduces readers to American sculptor William Edmondson (1874–1951) more than 80 years after his historic solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art. Edmondson began carving at the onset of the Depression in Tennessee. Initially creating tombstones for his community, over time he expanded his practice to include biblical subjects, the natural world, and recognizable figures including nurses and preachers. This book features new essays that explore Edmondson’s life in the South and his reception on the East Coast in the 1930s. Reading the artist through lenses of African American experience, the authors draw parallels between then and now, highlighting the complex relationship between Black cultural production and the American museum. Countering existing narratives that have viewed Edmondson as a passive actor in an unfolding drama—a self-taught sculptor “discovered� by White patrons and institutions—this book considers how the artist’s identity and position within history influenced his life and work. Distributed for the Barnes Foundation  Exhibition Schedule: The Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia (June 25–September 10, 2023)  

Elijah Pierce (1892-1984) was born the youngest son of a former slave on a Mississippi farm. He began carving at an early age when his father gave him his first pocketknife. Pierce became known for his wood carvings nationally and then internationally for the first time in the 1970s. Accompanying a major exhibition at the Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia, this publication seeks to revisit the art of Elijah Pierce and see it in its own right, not simply as 'naive'. Elijah Pierce made his living as a barber; he was also a qualified preacher. Just as his barber shop was a place for gossip and meeting, so his art reflects his own and his community's concerns, but also universal themes. Through his carvings Pierce told his own life story and chronicled the African-American experience. His subjects ranged from politics to religious stories but he seldom distinguished the race of his figures - he thought of them as everyman. His secular carvings show his love of baseball, boxing, comics and the movies, and also reflect his appreciation for American heroes who fought for justice and liberty. In 1932, Pierce completed 'the Book of Wood', which he considered his best work. Originally carved as individual scenes, the completed 'Book' tells the story of Jesus carved in bas-relief. He and his wife Cornelia held "sacred art demonstrations" to explain the meaning of the Book of Wood. Pierce's work was first appreciated in the art world thanks to a fellow sculptor, Boris Gruenwald, who saw the expressive power of his work. As a later critic wrote, "There are 500 woodcarvers working today in the United States who are technically as proficient as Pierce, but none can equal the power of Pierce's personal vision". Pierce became known primarily in circles promoting 'naive' art, winning first prize at the International Meeting of Naive Art in Zagreb, Yugoslavia, in 1973. The vast majority of his work is now held in Columbus, Ohio, which had become his home town. This book revisits Pierce's art seeking to see it in its own right, and not simply as 'naive'. Another critic wrote: "He reduces what he wants to say to the simplest forms and compositions. They are decorative, direct, bold and amusing. He uses glitter and all kinds of devices to make his message clear. It gives his work an immediacy that's very appealing" - an appeal arising from a sophisticated art with its own particular voice.

The Barnes Foundation s holdings of works by the renowned Post-Impressionist Paul Cezanne (1839 1906) sixty-one oils on canvas and eight works on paper are among the most significant in the world. The Barnes Foundation was established in 1922 by scientist, entrepreneur, and educator Dr. Albert C. Barnes, a passionate supporter of European modernism. His virtually unrivalled collection, which can only be viewed at the Barnes Foundation, also includes exceptional paintings by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, and many others. Beginning in 1912, Barnes acquired works by Cezanne from major Paris dealers such as Paul Durand-Ruel and soon ranked among the artist s most prominent collectors. At the time, this expressed a pioneering taste that Barnes shared with only a small group of enthusiasts, even though Cezanne had been posthumously hailed as a father of modern art at the turn of the twentieth century. The foundation s impressive holdings of Cezannes never before published in a single study in their entirety span every period of the artist s career and include his largest rendition of The Card Players and one of the three versions of The Large Bathers, one of his signal testaments. This lavishly illustrated landmark volume is both a work on Cezanne and his time, and an impetus for further study of an artist whose oeuvre is at once luminous, austere, challenging, and deeply confounding.

This engaging volume describes the creation and restoration of the extraordinary large-scale drawing The Temptation of Saint Anthony-a work by late 19th-century Belgian artist James Ensor (1860-1949)-on the occasion of its first public showing in more than 60 years. The piece is composed of 51 separate sheets of paper collaged into a hallucinatory social critique and artist's manifesto. Each sheet of the nearly six-foot-high work is reproduced at actual size, revealing Ensor's remarkable technique and fertile imagination. Here, Saint Anthony is surrounded not with nature, as customary, but with the moral decay of society. Replete with tiny scenes depicting both sexual temptation and spiritual piety, Ensor splices potent imagery from travelogues, popular science, and technology magazines into a Symbolist masterpiece. Susan M. Canning, Patrick Florizoeone, and Nancy Ireson analyze the drawing's meaning; Herwig Todts details its origins and early history; and Kimberly J. Nichols recounts the work's restoration. Distributed for the Art Institute of Chicago Exhibition Schedule: The J. Paul Getty Museum (06/10/14-08/31/14) The Art Institute of Chicago (11/23/14-01/25/15)

This publication celebrates for the first time the important creative collaboration between the artist Henri Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901) and his muse, the dancer Jane Avril (1868-1943). Avril was one of the stars of Moulin Rouge in the 1890s, and was nicknamed 'La Melinite' after a form of explosive. She was known for her alluring style and exotic persona, and her fame was assured by a series of dazzlingly inventive posters designed by Lautrec.